Tactile
by Inkedaway
Summary: Sans had never realized just how tactile he was until the fact stared at him in the face. (This fic was inspired by 'Overgrowth', and takes place in the Flowerfell au verse - if you don't know what that is, you're like to be very confused! Rated for mild cursing)


Sans had never realized just how tactile he was until the fact stared at him in the face. It was hard to deny it when his subconscious mind seemed to have power over his limbs, and the later seemed to have a mind of their own.

The first time he realized it, Frisk had still been trying to get _'out'_. They said it quite often, too.

Out. Because yeah, sure, okay, _why the fuck not._

The further into their journey that they went, the more he wondered if he couldn't just blast away the god damned ceiling of the underground; it seemed like an easier feat than having to avoid battle after battle without ever engaging. Reset after reset, death after death…. sometimes the flower's, sometimes the human's, and sometimes his own.

He figured it might've been the deaths that caused the change. Or maybe the potential had been there all along; damned if he knew. Still, the more time passed, jumped forward and backward, the more he came to realize that he very seldom _wasn't_ somehow touching the human.

The realization was startling, but obvious; when he wasn't leading them by the hand, he was carrying them, and when things were decently peaceful, they were sleeping against him. It was, without a shadow of a doubt, the most physical contact Sans had achieved in such a short period of time that did not somehow involve quantious amounts of violence on the side.

He refused to lie to himself; it was comforting, and comfort of any sort was a commodity he'd rarely seen much of. Bottom line being that it was addictive, and he'd not quite realized to what level until he noticed he'd developed an inclination for petting them. He hadn't even realized it until the _flower_ pointed it out.

"What're you doing?"

The squeaky voice had startled him out of his reverie, and he barely moved to glance at the weed out of his peripheral vision. The flower had wrapped himself around Frisk's throat, and lay nestled somewhere within the fluff of his jacket, barely peeking his face out of the safety and warmth within while the human slept.

"Nothing," The answer was instinctual, because while he had no bloody, _fucking_ clue what the weed was even talking about at the time, his go to response for everything was to go on the defensive. Everyone knew that the best defense was a good attack.

Everyone but the human, apparently.

As such, he turned his head and offered the flower a mildly annoyed glare, all the while entirely unaware that throughout the entire conversation, his hand had been moving in sweeping, calming gestures over the human's head.

"Yeah, no," came the flower's huffed reply, "That doesn't look like 'nothing' from here," it was probably at that precise point that the skeleton's features shifted from annoyed to confusion, because Flowey rolled his eyes and made a vague gesture heavenward.

It's that simple gesture that brought his sight over towards his hand, and once his eyes lay upon it, he froze, paused, and then glared at the offending member, because _what the ever loving fuck did it think it was even doing_? His fingers twitched, hair interwoven through the bone here and there, and it was only after Flowey let out a soft sigh and vanished from sight, that he finally allowed his hand to move. He lifted it up and strongly considered removing it entirely.

Frisk shifted their weight against him, restless, a small grunt leaving their throat in their sleep, and instantly his hand had returned to its previous actions, petting through their hair, and holy fuck, this was his life now.

 _This was what his life had been reduced to._

The human let out a sigh then, and relaxed their pose against him, once more lost within what he hoped was a dreamless, peaceful sleep. Suddenly, Sans couldn't muster the will to give a fuck about pride.

This was what his life had been reduced to, and he was _fine_ with it, he thought as he stroked aimlessly through the messy mass of hair to his right. He could have done much worse in life, after all.

—-

At first, Sans had tried in vain to convince himself that this was all for the human's sake. A way to help them know he was there, guide them through the darkness, adding to his voice with touch but… the notion was promptly and swiftly thrown out the proverbial window, because while it was true he was used to lying to others, he was not in the business of lying to himself.

That road only lead to folly.

He did it as much for them as he did it for himself; touch reinforced the fact they're still there after every death. Frisk was weak, but still there, and some small part of him breathes in relief each and every time.

And then, one day, the barrier shatters and the human… vanishes.

"Dead," the flower had said one day, "They're dead, Sans." The skeleton shakes his head because he can't accept that as true. He refuses to accept that as truth, almost as if believing that fact would somehow erase them from existence, and he growls and simply _refuses._

Once upon a time, Sans had thought himself frustrated by the resets. He thought himself upset, in pain because of them, but he wished he could somehow contact his past self just so he could shout into his own face that he didn't know _jack shit_.

Still, whatever higher power was watching him, taking pleasure in his god damned existence seems to take pity on him, because just like that, Frisk is returned. The laughable irony of the matter was that for the longest time, he had no idea how to react to this, and the roles were reversed for a short while; the human more or less successfully, led him around. The fact they're blind barely stops them, though he figured the barrier being down smoothed things over enough that they're not constantly in danger.

On the one hand, that's good.

On the other… if he's not protecting them, what was he? What was he even meant to do? What was his role in this story anyhow? How was he meant to act?

He doesn't have to voice any of this, and he started to suspect the human was an empath of some kind, because the way they read him is just mind boggling, and how on earth do they do that? They couldn't even see, for fuck's sake!

Again they took the lead in this, and instead of battles, there's more sitting, and instead of running for their proverbial lives, there's him reading books out loud. Sans swiftly decided that he can live with that, and thus, settled into a life that was mostly… _peaceful_ for once.

Still, he apparently couldn't shake old habits. His hand still unconsciously moved through Frisk's hair, though this time, his voice was added to the mix. He was reading from a random book he'd been handed, the words only half registering over the sound of the human's breathing and how it evened out as they recline against him.

And again, Sans found himself thinking: this is my life now. And strangely… he found himself satisfied with the thought. He could live with that.


End file.
